Person:Uriah Hawkins (2)

Uriah HAWKINS, next to the first actual settler of Harrison County, is deserving of a biographical notice in this connection, so we will invite the attention of the reader to a little hamlet in New York State, where he was born September 27, 1800. He was the son of Edward and Charity (SHIPMAN) HAWKINS. Edward was a farmer; and came from New York to Missouri, and after roughing it for some time in that State, went to Illinois, and when eighty-nine years of age in 1846, his son Uriah took him to Jackson County, Iowa, where he died September 16 of that year. Uriah had come to Jackson County in 1835, and July 10, 1847, he landed in Harrison County, and settled in what is now Cass Township, where he "squatted" on one hundred and sixty acres of land, which he subsequently paid the Government price of $1.25 per acre for. When he came to the county, he had a wife and five children: Jane, who married William J. ELSEY, who died in 1863; Edward is now on the old homestead; Emma died on October, 1863, and was buried on the farm in a private cemetery; Mary died in August, 1888, and is buried in the home cemetery; Esther married Adam CONRAD in Harrison County and died February, 1874. Uriah HAWKINS was a poor man when he came to Harrison County, having two yoke of oxen, two yoke of cows, a yearling heifer, a wagon and a little household furniture, but at the time of his death, September 29, 1869, he was in fair circumstances. He had been a member of the Latter Day Saints Church for thirty-eight years. Edward HAWKINS, the only son [note: he was not the only son, though he was the eldest] of pioneer Uriah HAWKINS, was born in Jackson County, Iowa in 1841, and came to Harrison County with his parents in 1847. When twenty-seven years of age, he left home and conducted a farm on his own seventeen acres. He was married in March, 1884, to Miss Lydia Ann Thorn THOMAS [note: the marriage record apparently says 1884, and gives her names as simply Lydia Thorn, no Thomas], a native of England, who came to America in 1883.^[1]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Myrick, Kent Davis. History of Harrison County, Iowa: containing full-page portraits and biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens of the county, together with portraits and biographies of all the governors of Iowa, and of the presidents of the United States. (Chicago [Illinois]: National Pub. Co., 1891).

   [Known as the 1891 History, as opposed to the 1915 and 1981 histories by different authors. Some excerpts may be found here, though perhaps not the one below left by a previous poster.]

2. ↑ Find A Grave: Hawkins Cemetery, Harrison County, IA, in Find A Grave
   Uriah Hawkins.

   URIAH HAWKINS
   DIED
   SEP. 29, 1869.
   AGED
   69 Y's 1 d'y.
   [birth calculates to 28 Sep 1800]

3. ↑ Hunt, Charles W; Keith E. (Keith Eldon) Myers; and Will Leach Clark. History of Harrison County, Iowa, its people, industries and institutions: with biographical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of many of the old families. (Tucson, Arizona: W.C. Cox, 1974)
   p. 446-7.

   [Known as the 1915 History of Harrison County.]
   Uriah Hawkins, beyond doubt, was the first white man to invade the "green glade solitude" of Cass township, with the view of making a permanent settlement. He came to this section of Iowa with his family, a wife and five children, July 10, 1847, and "claimed" land in section 20, where he continued to reside the remainder of his days, dying in the mother of September, 1869. Mr. Hawkins was born in New York state, September 17, 1800, a son of Edward and Charity (Shipman) Hawkins. The father [Edward] wandered with the family to Missouri, and after seeing many hardships, went to Illinois, and, when eighty-nine years of age, in 1846, his son, Uriah, took him to Jackson county, Iowa, where he died September 16, of that year. Uriah had come to Jackson county in 1835, and in July, 1847, landed in Harrison county, Iowa, settling at what is termed Cass township, as a "squatter" on a quarter section of land, for which he later paid the government one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. When he arrived here he was a poor man, having two yoke of oxen, two yoke of cows, a yearling heifer, a wagon and a small amount of household goods, but at the date of his death he possessed a fair competency. He had been a member of the Latter Day Saints church for thirty-eight years. This, in brief, is the biography of the first settler in Cass township.